In the book Talent Is Overrated, Jeff Colvin, Senior Editor at Large for Fortune Magazine, suggests that he has found a missing link – the difference between being mediocre and truly achieving greatness. And it’s not talent.
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An excerpt (paraphrased for space):
‘Look around you. Look at your friends, your relatives, your coworkers, the people you meet when you shop or go to a party. how do they spend their days? Most of them work. They all do many other things as well but how well do they do what they do? The most likely answer is that they do it fine. The odds are that few if any people around you are truly great at what they do-awesomely, amazingly, world-class excellent. Why?’
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There a few things this book suggests that I don’t agree with – like the fact that clinical psychologists have had a hard time defining what ‘talent’ is, therefore it must not exist. In a recent conversation with my stage manager Tony Lepore (who happens to have a degree in Philosophy) we decided that talent is a combination of experience and intuition combined with one other element.
This element is something the book touches on that I actually agree with. Deliberate practice.
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Cirque Du Soleil
Whether you’re on stage or off, a job requires performance. Great performance requires practice that is hard, and it hurts, but it works. Deliberate practice. When I toured with Tops In Blue we had to rehearse 18 hours a day for six weeks – through stressed fractures, minimal sleep and unbelievable stress – before we set foot on stage in front of an audience. But the finished product was undeniable and continues to wow audiences worldwide.
The best and most visible example of deliberate practice is Cirque Du Soleil. When I got selected as a performer with them in April (after a nine hour audition) I had a new appreciation for how to rehearse. Then I was invited to watch a rehearsal for KA at the MGM Grand and the precision and intensity of their rehearsal knocked me off my feet.
The result of their deliberate practice? The most successful live entertainment company on the planet.
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Can rehearsal alone replace talent? Is there a way to achieve greatness through repetition or are you born with an innate ability to do certain things better than most?
When I auditioned for Cirque du Soleil on April 16 2010 I had one thought in my head: I am prepared to fail. I wasn’t going to accept failure but if I didn’t make the cut it wouldn’t be because I didn’t give it all I had.
When I arrived at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for the first time in 2005 and began competing for audiences with the thousands of other unknown shows I was prepared to fail. The first night I did my show at the Gilded Balloon in Edinburgh there was no one in the audience. Zero. For the first two nights I performed my 60 minute show to an empty theater. The average audience at the Edinburgh Fringe is 5 people. By the end of the second week the show was selling out. I had won the Fringe First award and we were turning people away. Why? Because I stayed up until 2am handing out flyers. On the fifth night there were 8 people in the audience. One of them was from The Guardian.
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Since I began performing on stage in 1988 I have learned a few things about perseverance and expectations:
1. It is impossible to succeed without failure.
2. It is impossible to fail without trying.
3. If I don’t at least try, everything is impossible.
Which told me that as long as I don’t give up, I’m a success. Right?
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I wish I could say that people expected me to get this far in my career. A severely abused lower class black kid with a high school education and a two year degree from the Community College of the Air Force?
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The high school psychiatrist (with a Doctorate) gave me my projected career choices when I was 15: Addict, jail or dead. Michael Jordan inspired me to try and my wife gives me strength.
There is a very good reason things have slowed down on the blog lately: I auditioned for Cirque du Soleil. And got through!
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It was absolutely grueling, I won’t tell you what we did because it’s a secret and they said if I tell anybody they will cancel my birthday and kidnap my pets.
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I auditioned for them back in 2002 and it was an unforgettable and very educational experience. I made it to the final three and that was the end of the audition. Not sure what happened after that, apparently they didn’t have a show that I fit into. If you haven’t seen a Cirque du Soleil show you’re missing out – talk about a display of amazing talent. Acrobats, clowns, drag queens – it puts the Halloween parade in the East Village to shame.
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Today’s audition began at 9am and ended at 6pm and it was non-stop! I have done some very physical things in my life but nothing quite as challenging as a Cirque du Soleil audition. There were about 30-35 supremely talented actors when we started and when we finished there were 7. And I was one of them. Needless to say I’m sore from head to toe but if it’s worth having it’s worth working for right?
In the book Talent Is Overrated, Jeff Colvin, Senior Editor at Large for Fortune Magazine, suggests that he has found a missing link – the difference between being mediocre and truly achieving greatness. And it’s not talent.
